


my monster with a mistress is in love!

by flannypack



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Non-Famous, As Fuck, Bang Chan is a Mess, Clubbing, Heavy Drinking, Hwang Hyunjin is a Mess, M/M, Seo Changbin is Whipped, Seo Changbin is a Good Friend, Seo Changbin-centric, Sexuality Crisis, Soft Lee Felix (Stray Kids), extremely soft, hes sweet though hes just, mildly stuck-up seo changbin, promoting my chaptered fic with this heh, promotional fic, yknow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:22:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27090067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flannypack/pseuds/flannypack
Summary: Knitted into the very fibers of Changbin’s soul, he was an absolute fool for softness.He liked bunnies and kittens and lovely small things he could hold, driven by an almost primal urge within him to cherish them and protect. He liked soft contours and soft cruxes, soft skin and soft hair. Soft fingers and delicate lips and gentle eyes and sweet smells.Maybe the lights were messing with him, obscuring the possibility of something terrible like perfumes did with a funk, but, feeling assured by the sound of his pulse thrumming louder in his head than the music was, he decided he was definitely, definitely, attracted to Hyunjin’s friend.
Relationships: Bang Chan & Seo Changbin, Bang Chan/Hwang Hyunjin, Hwang Hyunjin & Lee Felix, Lee Felix/Seo Changbin
Comments: 1
Kudos: 56





	my monster with a mistress is in love!

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter 3 of my fic Catcher's Mitt!
> 
> hey yeah i liked this chapter a lot and worked on it for about three weeks? i figured what the hell, it could stand alone and sort of serve as a promotional piece for the bigger fic it was pulled from? its just too good to not get its own individual recognition, i had a lot of fun writing pretentious psych major changbin turning into stupid goo when he meets fefe heh p

Changbin was never one to shy away from a nightclub, but did an alleged group of four, whose common denominator was one nervous, overworked, sweaty Bang Chan, really need to kindle some kind of network among themselves in such a weirdly high-stakes environment?

Like, was it necessary to try and make their get-together more than what it actually was.

The nearly 30 minute walk from the station to Park Avenue was almost shockingly quiet, and near-silence still prevailed even after they got there. It only started to make a little more sense when Changbin realized almost every building in the surrounding area was residential. There was an elementary school right across the street. 

The front door of “Club Camelot” was squished into the wall of an alleyway, sidled up to what Changbin’s phone said was a local fabric store, and the queque wasn’t that long either, so even after standing in line under the overhanging Club Camelot threshold there was a general hush that made Changbin feel out of place on a Saturday night. 

Coming as a mild assuage to the itchiness in his ass, every time the door swung open to funnel another cluster of people inside, Changbin could hear the low bump and rumble of music and a crowd reaching up from the underground. 

He sighed and rolled his neck and shoulders. The sign did say Club Camelot, didn’t it?

For half of the walk over there, Chan had been picking up his phone and messing with his beanie in the front camera. Unsurprisingly, his ministrations started getting more erratic when they got in line, even more so after every time the club door opened and closed. 

“I think there’s only one way to wear that hat, Chris,” Changbin said after a minute more of Chan’s beanie-adjusting. 

Changbin had known Chan long enough to have permanently committed all of his self-soothing behaviors in his reflexive memory, front to back and up to down, and he also knew him long enough to know how often Chan would let himself forget that fact. 

That being said, Changbin knew Chan couldn’t control how or when his combination of clinical anxieties might rear their heads—not by a long, _long_ shot—but Changbin would never let Chan fall too far into himself. He hadn’t in the past, he wouldn’t that night. He’d seen the way small stuff could rapidly snowball with complete reckless abandon, so when Chan started getting antsy, Changbin coaxed him back off the edge of his own thoughts.

Chan tugged on the beanie one last time before shaking his head with a centering huff, and putting away his phone. He shot Changbin one of his sheepish smiles that read like self-depreciation. Changbin quickly wanted to soothe it, sending Chan a kinder smile in return. 

“Next time we’ll just kick back at my place, ‘kay? I think a nightclub is a little overkill too.” 

He clasped a hand over Chan’s shoulder then gave it a squeeze. He was surprised when Chan shook his head again and then looked up at Changbin, or attempted to, sideways and in an awkward, funny way, not quite meeting his eyes. 

“No, uh,” he laughed a little, and Changbin watched as a flush started rising to his white cheeks in mismatched red blotches. 

“Um, well... you’re right, but, not completely.” 

Well, consider Changbin intrigued. 

A few more steps forward, and the two of them finally arrived at the swinging glass door. Changbin reached past Chan and tugged it back open before it could close all the way, having let in the group of kids who’d been in front of Changbin and Chan when they were still in the line. Distantly, Changbin couldn’t deny the smallest swell of excitement that shuddered through him like the one he sensed in the group of kids once the two of them stepped into the tiny yellowish threshold. 

“Not completely?” Changbin asked, pulling his attention back to Chan and gesturing for him to walk in front. 

The hallway was narrow, definitely couldn’t accommodate the width of two grown men shoulder-to-shoulder, so Changbin broke them into a single file not unlike a claustrophobic lunch line. It was a straight shot until they reached the top of an equally narrow stairwell that, when Changbin leaned over Chan’s shoulder to peek at it, looked like it genuinely dropped straight into the gates of Hell. Darkness and red light was waiting at the bottom of the stairs and everything, shifting around ominously like lake water at dusk.

Alright, cool cool cool.

“Yeah, sure, I mean, clubs are overwhelming, right,” Chan started again.

“‘Cause, like, I don’t go often, I guess...” his voice softened as he trailed off—a little too off, and Changbin jerked his head up to roll his eyes. He punched the top of Chan’s arm as they began their trot down the stairs. Chan always managed to stumble over his own brain right at the worst moment. 

“So?” Changbin pressed, “What is it? So we can nip it in the bud, man. So I don’t have to watch you fix that beanie for the millionth fucking time.” 

Honestly, the flip from pure nervous energy to pure nervous excitement in Chan was a welcome change, for sure, and it warmed Changbin’s heart, but Changbin was kinda imagining they’d figure it all out before they reached the dance floor. 

“It’s Hyunjin,” Chan said with a gust of air.

“Bin, I-” when they rounded the corner at the bottom of the stairs Chan suddenly stopped. He probably didn’t mean to, but Changbin’s face collided with his back anyway, and whether it was an accident or not, all of Changbin’s nose still received the brunt of it. 

“ _Chan_ ,” he hissed, then whipped his head around to glance behind himself towards the stairwell. He hoped there wasn’t an unfortunate caboose getting trapped behind them, but, luckily, stretching all the way back to the piss-yellow stairwell, there wasn’t any sign of another round of partygoers and instead just a dark, empty hallway. 

“What about Hyunjin?” he asked, turning back to Chan while bringing a hand up to rub the bridge of his nose.

He was looking all over Chan’s face, nosing around his expression with his eyes to see if he could get an answer any faster that way. In the low red lights, he wasn’t quite sure if Chan’s cheeks were starting to get blotchier. 

Yeah, what about Hyunjin. The Hyunjin at the sweets arcade who helped Chan find Jeongin, the same Hyunjin who had cobbled together that night’s club excursion—and tried to get everybody else in Chan’s inner circle involved for whatever reason, but that was a gripe for another day.

Changbin couldn’t think of a different one.

Chan hadn’t said much else concerning the guy besides the Jeongin fiasco to Changbin since the night of the Jeongin fiasco, which had left Changbin to try and conceive of the guy at any level aside from maybe extroverted and a hallucination, all on his own. 

But, apparently, Chan suddenly remembered something tonight. 

Chan opened his mouth, then closed it, then opened it again, and while watching him Changbin wasn’t really feeling any less like he was trying to solve a math problem without having any numbers. That was, until he watched Chan’s hand as it left his side then reached around his head, stopping just underneath the edge of his beanie to fiddle with the hair at the nape of his neck. 

“ _Oh_ -” Changbin’s mouth fell open.

The realization knocked him on his ass like he’d taken a professional kickboxer to his brain. 

“You think he’s cute?”

—Changbin could not shoulder _all_ of the blame for taking so long to catch on. 

In recent years it’d become way too easy to forget that Chan could ever want to do more in the way of romance than just talk to somebody once then convince himself he had a million other higher priorities and never talk to that person again.

Changbin had been convinced his best friend’s unspoken philosophy since starting medical school was that crushes required a person’s complete monopoly on time. When there were only so many hours in a day, romance became a misplaced effort, and even more so for Chan, extraneous stress. Because he had enough emotional work as it was, worrying himself sick about his graduate courses and babying a 19 year old to death. That wasn’t even mentioning the self-directed music side career he was trying to get up off the ground, which Changbin thought might’ve been a great creative outlet if Chan hadn’t taken himself so seriously at the jump when he had one foot barely in the door. 

Chan’d buried himself so deep in the dregs of self-sabotage, Changbin started to believe he wouldn’t be able to afford the prices of commitment even if the time came when he actually wanted to. 

So, sue Changbin for having his grey matter knock around on his brain stem like a speed bag while he grappled with the realization. 

Continuing to stare at him, Changbin didn’t need a more firm confirmation of Chan’s crush on Hyunjin than the funny look that started to manifest across his face. He shifted through all five stages of grief in what couldn’t have been more than a few brief seconds as his gaze moved back and forth between the floor and somewhere on Changbin’s shirt, every single expression filtered through his on-brand fidgety embarrassment.

On that note, perhaps Changbin could find himself slightly more agreeable to that night’s weirdly high-stakes. 

His dependability as one of Chan’s closest confidants would be on the front line now, which was a very pleasant feeling that sat high in Changbin’s chest and gave him a nice, corny sense of purpose. He’d need to dust off his wingman abilities he put away, after he’d resigned to preserving them for Jeongin, and have them ready to quick-draw again from his holster at a moment’s notice, like a retired sheriff in a spaghetti western.

He was shaping up to have a night of respectable work ahead indeed, and it wasn’t anything Changbin wasn’t prepared to handle.

Chan, however... 

Well, Jesus. 

This was what being somebody’s best friend was all about, wasn’t it.

Changbin laughed good-naturedly and clapped a hand against Chan’s back to subliminally tempt him to start walking again.

He was feeling warmer, a little proud. He’d wished he’d known sooner, but it wasn’t that big of a deal. Changbin couldn’t even begin to try and sort out why Chan chose tonight to finally say something to him—and better yet, why Chan chose Hyunjin, and if he was being honest, he wasn’t really sure if Chan could sort it out himself either. 

Onwards and upwards, he’d once heard somewhere before. If Hyunjin’s “we’re at the bar!!” text Chan showed him earlier was anything to go by, they probably wouldn’t be running into him, or his friend for that matter, standing around causing a traffic jam in the hallway. 

“Hey, man. What am I here for,” he said. 

“Don’t sweat it, I got your back.” 

Pushing open one last set of doors—heavy black doors that were probably made of steel and nearly pushed Changbin back—the flood of music and voices washed away everything that wasn’t centralized to the interior of the club.

The lights didn’t quite reach them around the short wall the two of them had come in behind, but the effect of the club was persistent even without them. Music and noise pumped all the way through Changbin’s body, through the access point of his skin. Just past the carpeted wall, there was a sea of dark purples and reds that doused everyone and everything that swam around it in color.

Changbin had to admit, after the anticlimactic journey to finally reach the actual interior of the club, something about being swallowed by the gulf of its ecosystem sent a thrill shooting up his spine, and he briefly considered how well he was gonna choose to handle himself when he got his hands on some alcohol. Well enough of course to be the best damn wingman Chan and Hyunjin and Hyunjin’s friend had ever goddamn seen, but maybe not well enough to fight off getting a little rhythm in him and going out onto the dancefloor. 

Changbin watched as Chan tugged on his beanie one last time before he pushed past him and out into the lights, and what was probably the “general vip area” Chan insisted the two of them split the cost for.

To his immediate right, a row of raised red booths snugly lined a glass wall, and across from the booths to his left was a massive round bar lined with stools and people, and a smattering of square stand-up tables next to that.

Every color and defining shape of a person Changbin had to discern through a thick layer of purple and fuschia, so even if he knew exactly what he was looking for, he probably wouldn’t know if he’d seen it already. He squinted and uselessly looked at the bar. 

“Are they gonna come find us, or? Do they know where we are?” 

Changbin turned back to Chan as he yelled over the noise, finding him peering at his phone screen, likely looking to it for his answer. 

Changbin hummed and turned away, back towards the inside of the club and at the bodies swimming through its space. The clustering seemed to thicken into a decent crowd when the cozier section of the club opened up into a dance floor headed by a small stage. Nobody was performing, but there were people poking away at what looked like a DJ setup, so Changbin wiggled his hands into his pockets and secretly looked forward to that. 

“Chan?” 

Changbin just barely heard it, but it was definitely there, and he definitely hadn’t said it. He whipped his head around at the same time as Chan, and at once, his stomach dropped straight into his ass. 

The two men approaching looked like fucking mirages. Like effervescent specters of every top modeling agency’s wet dreams, especially in the light. 

Changbin immediately wanted to look at Chan, wanted Chan to look at him, and confirm to him, indubitably, with some semblance of reality, that the two people walking up to them right now were actually Hyunjin and Hyunjin’s friend. 

_Hyunjin’s friend_ , Changbin thought with a sudden cold sweat. 

This whole time Changbin hadn’t bothered to remember his fucking name. 

“Sorry we weren’t at the booth, we were getting drinks,” the taller one said when he arrived in front of them, holding up a martini glass in one big, decked-out hand. Changbin’s gaze snapped up to his face the second the tall one turned to him—like it was the universe’s silent order. Like he no longer had the option to look anywhere else but right back at the tall one the moment he expected his attention, with his long blond hair and his foxish eyes. 

“Changbin, I presume?” 

Changbin could tell he was straining to speak above the noise of the club when he happened to look at his throat and catch the veins in his long neck bulge. Not that Changbin had been staring at his neck, but, not that he didn’t exactly want to. Changbin met his eyes again and gave his very best smile—in the new company he suddenly found himself way too aware of how he did it—before shortly bowing his head. 

“Yeah, that’s me. It’s really nice to—“

His words jumbled against the inside of his mouth and vanished from the front of his thoughts when he spared a glance at the shorter one. A flush thrashed to life under Changbin’s skin that he hadn’t imagined he’d be getting until he was at least 6 shots in.

Changbin had always considered himself _tentatively_ bisexual. _Tentatively_ picking women and men, if only because another person’s pronouns didn’t always bar the odds of his own sexual attraction. 

That being said, however, knitted into the very fibers of Changbin’s soul, he was an absolute fool for softness. 

He liked bunnies and kittens and lovely small things he could hold, driven by an almost primal urge within him to cherish them and protect. He liked soft contours and soft cruxes, soft skin and soft hair. Soft fingers and delicate lips and gentle eyes and sweet smells. 

Maybe the lights were messing with him, obscuring the possibility of something terrible like perfumes did with a funk, but, feeling assured by the sound of his pulse thrumming louder in his head than the music was, he decided he was definitely, definitely, attracted to Hyunjin’s friend. 

“You’re…?” 

Hyunjin piped up, making a face when Changbin jerkily looked up at him and away from the boy standing half-behind him. He couldn’t tear his eyes away for very long, though. If Hyunjin was magnetic attraction, his friend was a whole solar system’s worth of his own gravitational pull.

“This must be, um,” Changbin said, not really to Hyunjin and perhaps to his pretty friend. 

Looking prompted, the boy stepped out from behind the square mass of Hyunjin’s big blazer, and smiled. The skin around his pretty eyes wrinkled cutely, and Changbin was a fool. 

Christ in Heaven, his smile was divine. 

Not a centimeter of gums, only a row of whites that looked pinkish under the light, and full candy apple lips that were stretched out around them. It filled up so much of his face with the extent of its effect, it crescent-mooned his lovely eyes and rounded out his cheeks like dough.

“Sorry, hi! I thought you were, um, saying something-”

“No, no, you go ahead, please.” 

His voice was miles deeper than Hyunjin’s, and Changbin’s, and Chan’s, and yet despite Changbin easily hearing him without fighting against the club noise for it, the boy still leaned towards him a little when he spoke. It was cute, and Changbin’s fingers twitched as he watched him and imagined gently holding his waist to help him keep his balance.

“I’m Felix! Hyunjin didn’t really tell me a lot about you guys, just that he was excited for tonight.” 

“Chan didn’t tell me anything either,” Changbin quickly said. 

In fact, he’d gotten told so little about everyone up until tonight, he thought maybe meeting up at a club and not knowing a single thing about the people he was meeting was actually the whole gimmick. However, with every unveiling of bits and pieces of information, Changbin felt less and less inclined to be as cynical about everything as he had been at the start. 

Maybe it was an unnecessary comparison, but this was kind of starting to feel like a blind double-date.

“Well, Hyunjin didn’t tell me anything either,” Chan squawked, then immediately looked like he regretted it. Changbin tried to laugh a little to ease the zest of Chan’s delivery, reaching out a hand to pat his shoulder like they were both in on a joke. 

“W-well, I mean,” Chan needlessly corrected, “not that he had to, or anything-” 

“Let’s sit down,” Hyunjin cut in, appearing completely unmoved by Chan’s fumbling and smiling very sweetly at him. 

He held Felix’s hand and pulled him along as he walked, effectively leading everyone like a pack of dogs. More optimistically, like tonight’s host, but he did seem deservingly charismatic.

Or maybe just enigmatic enough that three grown people didn’t instinctively keep pace with him.

Changbin digressed, and slowed down a bit to assure he was out of earshot before tugging on Chan’s sleeve and leaning into his ear.

“He’s cute.” 

Chan nodded his head, and Changbin wanted to tease him for the giant smile that materialized instantaneously on his face. He opened his mouth to say something back, but Hyunjin and Felix slid into their booth, Hyunjin with a yelp, and Chan only nodded again, looking commanded by the same law of the universe Changbin had obeyed when he asked for his attention earlier before. 

It was super adorable, despite the hard mass its unfamiliarity had taken the form of. Changbin was going to start chipping away at that tonight, though, and not just for Chan, but for himself as well. He wanted to know Hyunjin, drop-dead gorgeous Hyunjin, who’d had his best friend’s number for weeks, and spent every single one of them divulging all of absolutely nothing. 

And maybe Changbin would be blasted for the first half, but that was a problem future Changbin was going to deal with. 

Hyunjin didn’t set down his martini as he reached over and passed out the drink menus, the liquid in his cup sloshing precariously close to the edge while Hyunjin was being generous when nobody asked him to. There was a dim white light over their booth that thinned the purple and pink haze across Hyunjin’s face just enough for Changbin to wonder how drunk he was already, because he definitely wasn’t sober. 

“They have the best calpis sour here,” he gushed, Felix nodding next to him and Chan leaning over the table rapt. 

“Ask them to mix it with a little bit of lime soda, oh my God, it’s so good.” 

“Where is it on the menu?” Chan asked, picking up the laminated column of paper. 

Hyunjin finished off his drink then stood up to point, tapping with a manicured finger. Changbin turned over his own menu and located the list of chuhai and sours. 

A pair of big, beautiful brown eyes fell on Changbin, and he knew it for certain because he'd been staring at them first.

Felix was a little secret garden in his corner of the booth. He bloomed prettily on his own, and when he was spoken to it was like he had life itself to give. 

Changbin felt so fucking red when Felix tilted his head at him, the cutest variation of “what is it?” that Changbin had ever seen. 

Changbin just smiled at him, then shoveled his nose as far as he could back into his laminated drinks menu. 

“I’m only ordering strong shit for the rest of the night,” Hyunjin declared. 

Felix turned his head to look at him, then reached out a hand to pet the lapel of Hyunjin’s blazer, suddenly embodying a deep expression that Changbin couldn’t place despite his immediate compulsion to try to.

Hyunjin didn’t like to tell anybody about himself, and Changbin realized as he tore his gaze away from the spot where Felix touched him that that fact sure made it easy for Hyunjin to, say, already be in a relationship with his cute roommate. And make sure nobody would know. 

“I’m starting with the strong shit,” Changbin said, perhaps a bit too petulantly, because he knew he didn't have the right to feel one way or another about shit that wasn't any of his business, but he felt one way or another anyway. Hyunjin only giggled, though, and threw his arms up and cheered, wiggling his fists and making his jewelry jingle. 

“Good! It’ll loosen you up for some dancingggg!” 

The highest alcohol percentage any of them could get was 37%, but enough 70/30 sochu mixed with cherry Sprite and Changbin eventually had to take off his leather jacket and keep one arm on the table to prevent himself from swaying and embarrassing himself. 

All of them were drinking like champions, but in the back of the unsteady ship of his brain, Changbin thought out of all of them he was probably the only one that wasn’t doing it to make talking easier. Fuck, he just liked being fucked up, but he did end up joining in on gradually getting noisier anyway, his face hurting from the stupid grin he couldn’t put away. 

Hyunjin was standing again—he sure did that a lot—gesticulating with his long limbs as he tried to guess where Chan was from. It arose from a conversation about how he and Chan met, and how shocked he was when Chan started speaking English to him with an accent. 

“Think warmer,” Chan said. Now that he was drunk the hearts practically leaked from his puffy black eyes and he looked up at Hyunjin like he was looking at the stars.

“So nowhere in Europe,” Felix laughed, and the lovely, squeaky sound filled up another inch of Changbin’s chest. Alright, he’d admit, he wasn’t any better off than Chan and he’d only known Felix for a couple of hours, compared to Chan’s more robust few weeks.

Their gazes kept colliding against each other, and it wasn’t as if the both of them weren’t literally participating in a conversation and Felix was singling him out, but Changbin just couldn’t help himself. Every time Felix locked him in, for just a few seconds in his doe-eyed stare, Changbin felt himself spiritually rejuvenate. Seriously. 

“O-kay, nowhere in Europe, so my question is why the fuck did he sound European?” Hyunjin huffed, crossing his arms. 

He was well-drunk too, Changbin could make out the flush on him that practically rivalled Chan’s, but Changbin and Chan and Felix’d had so much shit to say about themselves that Hyunjin had still smoothly weaseled his way out of saying anything himself. 

Changbin had the rest of his fucking life to figure it all out, but it’d become irritating that Hyunjin chose to hoard such stupid information. Like where he worked, what the fuck? 

“A lot of European-looking people sound like him, maybe that’s what’s throwing you off,” Changbin said, Chan nodding with agreement. 

“I don’t know what that means ,” Hyunjin said. He was pouting with his full lips, which made him look like the absolute picture of sex appeal, and reached for his mixed drink to gulp down a monstrous amount.

Some of it dripped out the corner of his mouth, and it almost looked enticing, like Changbin could wipe it off for him, but Changbin quickly looked over at Chan and Felix to remind himself of why he wasn’t going to stare like that anymore. Why he was going to try. 

“It means, like, generally caucasian people are associated with that place. Like, you think of it and you don't think, 'oh, I know a Korean guy from there'.” Changbin watched Felix genuinely trying to curate his words precicely. 

He and Chan already learned about the one in a million chance that they were both Korean-born students, raised in the same country, from the same city, and happened to be in Kyoto Japan at the same time, and then proceeded to befriend one another. It all had happened in silent conspiracy and it had been genuinely hilarious, their winks and nods at each other as they acknowledged it’d go right over a drunk Hyunjin’s head—definitely not a sober one—and he’d actually be playing one versus three. 

“Couldn’t you say that about any place?” Hyunjin asked. 

“Maybe not Africa.” 

“Well is he from fucking Africa?” 

Felix laughed some more, his nose wrinkled as he threw his head back. 

“Where in Africa would he be from? I thought we were naming countries not continents?” 

The quip made everyone erupt into laughter, and even over the sound of the club, Changbin could hear every voice. Even Hyunjin’s, who leaned onto the table with his hands and had a cackle like a hyena’s. 

Changbin wiped the sweat from exertion off his lip with the back of his hand and reached for his fifth, no, sixth drink? He didn’t know, but he drank it like Hyunjin had drank his.

He swallowed until there was nothing left and then wished the effect he wanted was more immediate, and he could be far enough off his ass to have a better excuse for wanting to suddenly dance. 

He would dance, and maybe something would happen between Chan and Hyunjin, but that was his secret plan, his wingman plan. His nosey plan, perhaps, if Chan would tell him anything about it afterwards. 

Changbin stood up and started rolling the short sleeves of his tee up to his shoulders. Everybody looked over at him at once, and Changbin finally felt like he was in charge now, this was his pack of wolves. 

“Where are you going?” Hyunjin asked, taller than Changbin standing but looking quite diminutive from Changbin’s point of view. 

“I am going to set the dance floor on fire.” 

For a few scant seconds Hyunjin looked like he couldn’t choose between being exaggeratedly shocked and genuinely busting his gut, but the statement immediately earned unabashed laughter from the other two. Hyunjin’s giggles followed soon after and Chan even let out a whoop, fanning a hand at Changbin like Changbin was already alight. 

“I cannot let you do that alone,” Hyunjin gasped, a hand of his flying out to grasp and squeeze the thickest part of Changbin’s arm.

It immediately made Changbin falter. 

His roguish mystique had disappeared as quickly it’d manifested.

He opened his mouth and glanced down at Chan and Felix, who kind of looked like they really didn’t notice Hyunjin touching him, or really didn’t care. But he didn’t want to take his chances, and, wouldn’t he rather like to dance with Felix? 

“Felix,” he said, turning his arm away and out of Hyunjin’s grasp to reach out towards his secret garden and hold out a hand. He felt his whole face get even redder but who the hell was keeping track. 

Brown eyes widened at Changbin’s outstretched palm, but the flowering effect of his smile made them narrow, and he looked like a prince—no, a radiant fairy—standing up from his corner spot and sliding his warm hand into Changbin’s. 

“You want me to burn the dancefloor with you?” he sweetly asked with a giggle tinkling at the edges of his voice. He stepped past Hyunjin, excusing himself when he bumped into him, and Chan finally joined everybody else standing, but Changbin was letting him loose. 

Dancing was suddenly for Felix now. For Chan and Hyunjin a little, but mostly for Felix now. 

He was floating as he held Changbin’s hand. His silvery bangs reflected the club lights and in the long-exposure of Changbin’s dizzy vision, the colors created a little romantic crown on his head that was made of glass. 

“Yeah. Are you a ray of sunlight?” 

Changbin was drunk, he just said what his heart felt and couldn’t remember he wasn’t a poet and was supposed to exhibit a little more restraint.

Felix blossomed beautifully and laughed at him, looking a bit taken aback by the admission so Changbin would have to tell him a million times so Felix would understand. 

“Thank you, I think? C’mon, Hyunjin and Chan wanna dance too.” 

Changbin let Felix lead him out to the dancefloor, his hand in Felix’s like he was being guided up to Heaven. 

He did not mind following Felix at all, not like he minded when Hyunjin did it. Felix could take him anywhere he pleased and Changbin would choose to be his lamb. 


End file.
